Wednesday 16 May 2012

'The Door Left Open' by Jayne Stanton


Parties are potent cocktails: pumped-up base beat, stifling room heat; too much booze on token food; deep tokes on dubious smokes; sweat, hormones, aerosol testosterone; piss-soaked mats in student flats.  Space invasion of the freakiest kind – personal space.
No wonder the hallway beyond the bathroom beckoned an ebony finger in welcome. A wedge of lemon light. A door, ajar. I coax it further, one tentative finger tracing its satin gloss edge. I slip inside to lesser darkness. Like a Barely Black silk stocking across my eyes, it offers me no choice but to peer through it, unless I choose to step outside, break its magic. Through the voile-curtained window, a netted moon makes black lace of oak tree bones.
I sense it first in the pit of my stomach: a primal meeting. Its bulk dominates the room. Oak headboard, heavy statement; wooden, overbearing. Like that which hammers home his urgency, nightly. Unrelenting tattoos beaten against the too-close, too-thin stud wall to the marital bed where she lies, inert, whilst he carves me with his twisted love. Night terrors. Mine.
Yet I’m drawn, my frame hopeful of its softer side. I find it, piled with winter layers shed in pursuit of heated moments. Burden-heavy, I lie on its yielding mass. Serge and tweed too course, my fingers forage, find the fur. It slips around me, a welcome second skin. I curl, foetal, as it moulds to my need for tactile comfort.
This softer bulk is reminiscent of milk and mother love, yet darker promises emanate from deep inside the pelt. I’m a kitten, milk-eager, nipple-nuzzling. Guzzling, paws palpating, insistent claws pressing home the urge to satisfy my thirst, then more: crossing the line to self-indulgence, I gorge, driven by animal lust.
She rolls me over, exposing my swollen belly. Her barbed tongue grazes me exquisitely as she licks my length, searching out the moisture seeping from my between my legs. Her experienced tongue deals with my lack of self-control. I overcome my shame, surrender to the rhythm of her attentions, her business-like loving. Sated, I sink further, exploring her foxiness.
*          *            *
Pale light, translucent blue as breast milk, claims me from sleep. I sense the loss of weighted warmth, a shedding of skin. Through slit eyes I watch her rise from beside me, a sinuous creature, dark hair thick and glossy. She stands by the bed, looking down, sporting the fur coat like a trophy. I’ve no doubt those green eyes know me as they linger over my spent body: budding breasts, pregnant belly, legs spread, replete. She widens the door crack, slips through, leaving me to deal with further loss of self-control, the insistent base beat.
As my fingers set to work, I look towards the door, left open.

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